Old News Item

Posted On: 2005-04-01;Microsoft switching all C++ development to use VCF

DATELINE APRIL 1, 2005

Microsoft switching all C++ development to use the Visual Component Framework

April 1, 2005 (The Internet) - In what is being regarded as a stunning tour-de-force of Machiavellian political wizardy, it's being reported that Microsoft is switching all of it's C++ development to use the VCF, as opposed to .NET, MFC, or even WTL. While Microsoft press spokeswoman Jenna Jameson had no immediate comments on this earth shattering news, ZDNet's David Berlind reports that insiders within the company are breathing a sigh of relief.
"The old stuff just wouldn't cut the mustard anymore, and frankly, MFC just blows bacon-bits" claims a senior project manager for Microsoft's Excel development group.
"We've got folks just going nuts trying to scrape MFC code along, and maintaining it has just turned into a nightmare. We evaluated a lot of different options, looked at wxWidgets, GTK, even considered writing something ourselves, but when we saw the VCF, we just knew - this was it." said another top developer in the Office group.

Not much is known about the project, and it's elusive maintainer, a program writer who goes by the hacker alias of "ddiego". However, since word of this breakthough event within Redmond got out, industry analysts have been going over it with a fine toothed comb. Says Gartner IT Analyst Bob Jones, "This stuff is amazing, it's radical, it's a breath of fresh air. This might be the very thing to breath life back into the Redmond campus. I've got a whole team of people evaluating it right now in more detail, but I can tell you, from a first round study of it, this could revolutionize the way software gets written at Microsoft." Jones claims the new software literally is a massive paradigm shift, something the entire industry has been waiting for since the dot.com crash of 2000. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was heard to have exclaimed "Holy shit, this stuff rocks!", but was unavailable for further comments.

Microsoft's stock shot up 12.5% at the news of the software giants change in heart, and investors everywhere are betting strongly on the companies performance in the hopes of increased security gained from using the new VCF software. Yankee analyst Laura DiDio said this may open the doors to the end of open source, if this takes off internally within Microsoft, "Microsoft's security is crucial not only to enhance the software of the network, but also to maximize the accessibility, availability and confidentiality of better C++ development for over-worked developers.". Financial insiders at JP Morgan and Merill Lynch have all upgraded Microsoft from a "keep" to a "buy".

Open source advocates were stunned by the news, Ximian's Miguel de Icaza was breathless in anticipation, and there are hints from within Novell that the company may be dropping Mono, in preparation for returning to it's C++ roots and switching over to using the VCF to take advantage of it's unique capabilities. "Hey, if it's good enough for Microsoft, then we probably want to drop whatever we're doing and look into copying them. Gnome would work so much faster if we just rewrote it using the VCF. Plus, we could run our software on a Mac, since running pretty much anything on Linux just sucks anyways." The Free Software Foundation's bearded Richard M. Stallman expressed concern that the license of the VCF was not GPL compatible. "These BSD guys are just ruining software. By freely giving away their efforts to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who comes along, they're eroding software freedom, and I just ethically can't stand by and do nothing. The FSF will not stand idly by while this travesty takes place. All our rights are at stake here, and the GPL is the only thing standing in the way of corporate interests from stangling the creative innovations going on outside the proprietary prisons of non free software." said Stallman.

Microsoft's Jameson did say that Microsoft would be making a press release "within the next few days" regarding the change over. When asked if Chairman Bill Gates, or Steve Ballmer would be at the conference, Jameson down played the question saying "Microsoft cannot confirm or deny the presence of availabillity of it's senior executives."